Exit the Actress (27 page)

Ruby is perplexed by all our backing and forthing. I am happy to be back in the capital and am relieved to have escaped my family. Their ability to turn even the most public disaster into a personal calamity astounds me. Rose was distraught as she was unable to rescue her gowns from Madame Ross’s before our departure, and she is sure that Mathilde, a rival French whore, has made off with them in the chaos. She talked of little else all the way to town—exasperating.

Mother got drunk and fell down the kitchen stairs, spraining her ankle and squashing a bag of ripe tomatoes—messy. We left her to recuperate at Hill House, attended by Perry, Hart’s new valet, and Kate, the scullery maid—heaven help them.

I have only today ventured out into the wreckage of London, and I was shocked by what I found. The city is in ruins—that I expected—but daily life continues,
miraculously.
Shopkeepers whose shops burnt to the ground have set up in tented, temporary structures and are carrying on. Blacksmiths are blacksmithing in the street; cheesemongers are cheesemongering out of makeshift barrows; mothers feeding their children in the rubble where their kitchens stood.
Hooray for Londoners!

Note
—Hart just poked his head in to tell me that although the theatres will remain closed for some time, we have been invited to play at Whitehall. To
revive
the spirits, says the king.

I went by hackney to the new market today on Tower Hill. All the talk was of conspiracy. Who started the fire? Everyone is suspected—the Quakers, the French, the Dutch, certainly any foreigners, but Catholics most of all. It is fear that fuels these suspicions. Why would Catholics deliberately burn London? It is not logical. That they are obsessively seeking out a
who
rather than a
what
is irritating. Everyone is always so keen to find a who. A better fire brigade system and designated firebreaks sound to me like a better place to spend energy. There is also more quiet, more secret talk of the government’s involvement. That in order to create a new and glorious London we had to burn the old. I do not believe such things of people.

Rose returned from the Exchange (the New Exchange in a new spot—everything is new now) this morning and told me a ghastly rumour. They (the ever chattering
they
) are saying that the king might have started the fire himself! They say with the new building plans he stands to gain three hundred thousand pounds! “No,” I told her vehemently. “He loves his city … he was the one riding around putting
out
the fire. It is ridiculous.” Rose agreed that it was a nonsense rumour, but a sticky one. She’s heard it three times already this morning.

What
an evening!

We did it. Hart and I and the company played George Buckingham’s
The Chances,
for the king and queen and all the court. The queen wore a simply but elegantly cut amethyst gown, and the king wore a dazzling white silk coat with black-worked cuffs—only this king could pull that off. Buckingham stood off to the side and chewed on the end of his thick blond wig in anxiety until the play was over. Rose sewed me a stunning silver gown of layered silk. The light layers gave a floating effect, and I felt like I soared through the dancing without touching the ground. As soon as we left the palace I shamelessly hitched up my beautiful new gown to keep it out of the London mud. The messy rebuilding plus the recent rain has made the city a river of mud.

Rose has been working with Madame Leonine, the famous French dress-maker who has recently moved to London. She has set up a small atelier in Broad Street. She was lucky to get a space, as the reshuffling after the fire left so few vacant, and is already catering to the highest ladies in the land. It is an unlikely pairing, but she and Rose work well together. Both realists, they deliver exactly what they promise.

The performance was witty and sharp and energetic—my muscles throb, and my face aches from smiling as I tumble into bed. Still, it is a
successful formula—smile, sally, jab, forgive, laugh. Everyone enjoys the fast repartee—except perhaps Hart, who can sometimes look wounded as I hurl these barbed lines at him (all in the script, and all in fun). I always take time to reassure him afterwards, although why he should need reassurance when he can plainly see that they are not my words is beyond me. It is exhausting, and my declarations of love grow more adamant.

“You must become a more convincing liar, darling,” Teddy scolded tonight, pulling the last pins from my tightly upswept hair.

“I wish I did not have to lie,” I responded with my customary candour, raking my fingers through my heavy curls, scratching my itchy scalp.

His eyes met mine in the mirror. “But if this is the life you wish to live, you pays your money, you takes your choice.”

Note
—Castlemaine was not in attendance, as I hear she is very much visibly carrying the king’s fifth child, but she has requested a repeat performance for select friends tomorrow night!

It has become custom for us to do double performances with a costume change in between: the first for the king and queen and court, the second for the king and Castlemaine and court. Strangely, everyone pretends that this is not the case. The audience pretends that they have not just seen the play, and we pretend that we have not just performed the play. Bizarre. Tom frets over the expense of extra costumes.

I watch the king, in the centre of it all. He is courteous and even affectionate to his little barren queen, and seems comfortable but not overly enraptured with Castlemaine. It is
la belle Stuart
who holds his interest. She moves easily (if vapidly) between both worlds, and the king’s eyes never leave her shapely backside.

Castlemaine has taken to addressing me after the performances. She seeks my advice about gowns and shoes and dancing and toilette.

“I must get some of that lovely appley scent you use,” Castlemaine said
tonight, cornering me in the Matted Gallery. “It would be charming for the country.”

I looked at her uncertainly. Her own scent was an oppressive musk. “I’ll ask my apothecary to send some to you,” I said with brittle gaiety.

“Oh, do!” Castlemaine said, squeezing my arm conspiratorially. Just then a shy thin girl of about five years emerged from behind Castlemaine’s skirts. “My daughter Charlotte,” she said, pushing the little girl towards me. “Charlotte is here at the request of His Majesty, her father,” Castlemaine said pointedly, just in case I had mistaken her parentage. “She is interested in music and the arts. Mrs. Gwyn is an
actress,
Charlotte,” she said in that sing-song voice adults often use with children.

“On the stage?” the little girl asked solemnly, her eyes growing large.

“Yes,” I said, amused.

“Do you dance and sing?”

“Yes.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes.”

She sucked in her breath sharply, considering this important information. “I love to dance and sing. May I be an actress?” she asked, turning to her mother.

Her mother laughed a throaty, rich laugh. “No, precious, daughters of kings do not go on the stage.”

Hearing his daughter’s voice, the king broke away from his conversation with Lord Arlington and joined our unlikely trio.

“What’s this?” he asked his daughter. “Up so late?”

“I thought Your Majesty would enjoy our daughter’s company on such a lovely evening.” Castlemaine said sweetly, with a sly hint of warning.

The king frowned. “I think it is time for bed, sweetheart,” he said, leaning down to Charlotte.

She bobbed him a miniature curtsey good night, and her nurse stepped forward to whisk her off to bed.

“One a.m., madam?” the king said quietly.

Just then I heard
la belle Stuart’s
peal of laughter, and the king’s head swivelled round like a dog hearing his master’s call.

Without waiting for Castlemaine’s response, the king moved off into
the crowd to find her. I looked at Castlemaine, who had forgotten my presence. Single-minded absorption played across her face. For a moment she dropped the careful masque of the unruffled first mistress and looked like an irritated fishwife.

Later in the big bed at Maiden Lane I considered the evening. I am flattered by Castlemaine’s attention, but find it unsettling, too. I cannot think what has possessed her to take me up. It might be because I am a particular friend of her cousin, George Buckingham. It might be because very rarely the king smiles and winks at me (twice in the last month!), although Hart makes sure never to leave us alone together. Hard to fathom Castlemaine’s motives—all I truly know is that they are not without calculation.

Note
—Mr. Williamson, who publishes the
London Gazette,
wrote a scathing article defending the king. He said His Majesty would never consider profiting from the disaster, and shame on anyone who would think he would. Bravo!

The theatres are reopened! Yet Hart does not seem pleased. How the audience has missed us. It is delicious to play for them again, and they are frantic in their adoration. They howl with delight and thunder their applause. It can be frightening.

Note
—Women are
still
wearing the fashionable long trains of last season; Mrs. Kendall’s was petal pink, for God’s sake. It seems lunacy in this city of dust and dirt and reconstruction. They are trailing London mud all over the carpets—the new carpets Tom bought for the refurbishment. Tom hopes this horrid fashion will go away soon.

A whole week off—heaven. We have on Beaumont and Fletcher’s
The Maid’s Tragedy
(dull and long) at the moment. Becka is playing Evadne, and I must say, she does do it well. Poor Teddy is mourning the loss of that part. Evadne was his favourite. “It was my best,” he said wistfully this morning over coffee and toast. “Better than my Epicoene, better than my Juliet … Ahem, Ellen!”

“What?” I said, surprised, looking up from my script—I am Becka’s understudy, and I am nowhere with my lines.

“Better than my
Juliet
?” he repeated, waving his toast for emphasis. “And then you say…?”

“I didn’t see it. I was too young.”

“Ellen!” he shrieked.

“No, Teddy, nothing has ever been better than your Juliet,” I placated, hiding my smile behind my coffee cup.

“Thank you,” he said graciously. “Becka, that thundering trollop, has no business in my roles—or my gowns. My yellow silk, she wore last night—the gossamer sleeves were perfection,” he moaned. “I’m sure she has ruined them with her beefy appendages.”

I laughed. Even if Becka turned in a flawless performance, Teddy would find fault. Thank heaven I am spared such critique. I do not want that part—even with yellow gossamer sleeves—and I could not bear to play another lamentable death scene. I happily leave it to the Marshall sisters.

Nick is cast opposite, so Teddy has the week off as well. We have been running about like truant children, gaming and dancing and dicing. Hart disapproves, naturally. I try my best to keep it from him, but he hears about it anyway; it is not the servants but the gossip sheets that give me away. Damn Ambrose Pink, whoever he may be. The theatre is a hotbed of gossip. Hart’s temper is growing, and I fear I shall never make him happy. If I am honest, I will admit that I have less and less of a heart to try.